Spring Day
by ebb and let go
Summary: Hinata is living in the shifting mirage between two worlds: the reality of homework and paychecks and grocery shopping, and the life all around him that he can't remember.
1. Blank White Paper

I breathe, slowly.

Inhale, exhale.

In and out.

It's hard. Harder than it should be.

Something soft and springy presses against my back. I am lying flat, facing upwards, surrounded by light. I can't move.

What has happened to me?

I don't remember.

Sudden, blinding light floods my head. I blink and squint against it, my eyes stinging. Then I realize that I am staring at the sky.

The words to fit it flutter into my head like scraps of paper, a name scrawled on each.

 _Blue. Deep. Bright. Endless._

Then somebody speaks, a woman's voice, brisk and quick. It takes a moment or two for me to understand.

"Wait a sec, is he—?"

She leans over me, shoulders and a head with a fringe of chin-length hair, blocking out the light. "Hinata-san? Hinata-san! Can you hear me?"

I take a breath and open my mouth. My voice is a ragged, painful whisper.

"What… where…"

"You're at Shigeki General Hospital, in Kyoto," she answers. "Do you think you can sit up?"

Her words spill over each other, too fast for me to follow. I think through them once, twice, and say, "Yes."

She lifts my shoulders and eases a pillow underneath them, propping me upright. I wish I could do it myself, but I can hardly lift one hand, let alone support my own weight. Why am I so weak?

"How do you feel, Hinata-san?" she asks.

How do I feel? My mind is a deep, shadowy aquarium, all the answers stirred into the gravel at the bottom. I look down at my lap.

Funny. On the edge of the mattress is a hollow, the sheets creased in wrinkles, as though something heavy had rested there for a long time.

I reach over, fingers shaking, to feel it. The smooth fabric is warm.

"Was… somebody…sitting there?"

I look at the nurse. She is staring at me, eyes narrowed, as though she is picking my mind apart and startled by what she sees.

"No," she says. "No, Hinata-san, there wasn't."

I lean into the pillow and let my head fall back, gazing at the ceiling. Blank chalk-white tile.

For some reason, I want to cry.


	2. The Edge of Thought

A firm jawline, lightly tanned, with a quirk of humor in the lips. Longish blue-black hair in tousled spikes. Frank, friendly eyes look back at me out of the face they say is mine. It isn't a bad face.

"Does it look familiar at all, Hinata-san?"

Something over my own shoulder catches my eye. A flash of magenta, as though someone had passed my open door. I listen for footsteps. In the sleepy, sun-warmed afternoon, this wing of the hospital is almost silent.

I don't hear anything.

"Hinata-san?"

"Oh. No, nothing," I say, and hand the mirror back.

The doctor perched on the swivel stool next to my bed is very young, can't be much older than me. He has an open, boyish face framed in cropped-short hair the color of copper. His nametag is flipped around so that I can't read it. He says he specializes in brain injuries and their effects.

That's what they say has happened to me, but I don't remember. I don't remember anything.

I reach for the lamp on my bedside table, to switch it off because the afternoon sunlight stretches hot and heavy across my sheets and I must be wasting electricity, but I overreach and knock over my glass. Cool water spills across the table and drips onto the corner of my pillow.

"Whoa," says the doctor, jumping up to help me. "Careful there… here's a towel, need any help…? You got it? Well, OK. What were you trying to do?"

"I was—" And then I stop. There isn't a lamp on my bedside table. Just a napkin, and a now-empty glass of water, and a couple sleeping pills in case I want to take them later.

What was that?

"Look," says the doctor. "It's OK. You look tired. How about I come back later?"

"All right," I say, because I don't know what else to say.

He gets up to leave. As he turns away, his nametag stirs a little, and I can almost read it, but not quite.

For a moment, something brilliant and blinding flashes across my mind, and fades like a shooting star. For a moment I'd remembered something.

What was it?

My ears are ringing. I swallow the sleeping pills dry, one at a time, and lean back into my pillow. Maybe I'll feel better after a nap.


End file.
